


Telling little stories

by emei



Category: Frances Hodgson Burnett - A Little Princess
Genre: Gen, Yuletide, challenge:Yuletide 2008, recipient:fresne
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-20
Updated: 2010-01-20
Packaged: 2017-10-06 12:14:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,752
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53552
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emei/pseuds/emei
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Everything's a story. You are a story - I am a story." Sara Crewe during WWI.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Telling little stories

The restaurant of the hotel has large windows overlooking the street. Outside it is dark but the light spilling out through the windows illuminate the passer-by's somewhat. Sara lets go of the hand of the young man she's just been dancing with. He's one of Ermengarde's cousins, almost as clumsy as Ermengarde herself is on her worst days, and Sara noted the flash of relief across the young man's face when she declined his offer of another dance, claiming to be thirsty. He tries hard to be gallant when he escorts her off the dance floor; she smiles at him, lets go of his hand and turns towards the window. Outside, standing absolutely still as if it would make her invisible, is a young girl. Shabby clothes hanging on a too-thin body, painfully sharp cheekbones, but what gets to Sara the most is the hunger in her eyes - wild, a dancing mix of love for this wondrous sight presented to her, envy, and anger verging on madness. Sara meets her gaze and tries for a warm and kind smile even though she feels quite shaken, but the girl flinches and dashes away. Sara sinks down on a chair, feeling small and powerless. With force it hits her how absolutely horrid it must be to be a girl in the attic in these times, when all men behave like wild animals.

She ponders her deep pink satin dress (the colour suits you so wonderfully, said Uncle Tom), the white tablecloths and brightly burning candles, the small orchestra, the couples twirling around on the floor or laughing at the tables, and finds it unbearably shallow. Naturally the ball is a charity event (to support our brave soldiers!) but she thinks that it doesn't really matter. It's nothing more than an excuse to drench your worries and sorrow in extravagant ways as in the old days, but under patriot and moral pretences. The laughter and the bright smiles ring false, the compassion seems hypocritical and Sara's dress feels to her like an insult to all the people passing outside those windows.

Sara's heard the whispers, sometimes subtle and sometimes less so. They still call her Princess Sara of the diamond mines. Or Princess Sara of India.

The last time she was in India. Her body remembers it vividly. The heat, the sun, and the smells, so different from London's. She remembers lying outside in shadow, reading a book, having cold drinks served by a bowing Lascar. She remembers running, faster and further than she ever had before. The chanting rhythmic calls of the mob beating against her skin, thrumming like the heartbeat in her chest. Their anger is frightening, burning with righteousness, mingling long years of desperation with newfound hope. It is a demonstration winding through the city, taking bigger and bigger streets, filling them up with pulsating masses of bodies. Sara stands at a street corner a bag of fruit in her hand. She listens carefully over and over until she's able to make out the works of the slogans and work out their meaning. British out of India. Freedom from colonial rule. She turns and walks slowly purposefully away from the masses and their chanting. After twenty meters or so as the sounds from behind resonates more and more violently in her chest she abandons all pretence and runs, runs. Later she thinks: I am a symbol. That's why I was so frightened. I'm never just Sara; kindhearted smiling storyteller. In England I was Sara of India, they looked at me and saw exoticness, diamonds and an abundance of piquant and rich (possibly decadent) Indian stories all wrapped up in an acceptably British package. Here I'm Sara the British young Missee Sahib of the diamond mines - of their diamond mines. She thinks that in the eyes of the masses burning with bright anger she can never be Indian. No matter that she grew up in India; that she feels more home here than in London even after all these years. In her face and in her skin (that welcomes the Indian air like a homecoming) is the proof of her non-belonging.

Tom sends her to Paris. He wants her away from the unrest, but stays behind himself to sort out some business. Sara makes him promise, several times over, to take good care of himself and to come join her as soon as possible. Leaving India again is a sorrow but Paris is a joy. She takes great pleasure in speaking her mother's language and in the fact that she has no given identity here; that the people she meets don't immediately know how to classify her. She could be French, just another wealthy young Parisian lady. She's neither an Indian princess like in London nor an upper class Missee Sahib like in India. The streets are bustling with life, the Patisseries filled with delicate little sweet things almost to pretty to be eaten. Sara laughs and twirls through this life, adored by the friends of Tom she's staying with. They're a couple a little older than him, whose children have moved away, and they keep telling Sara (and everybody they present her for) how lovely it is to have a youngster in the house again. Et elle est si charmante! Sara misses Tom. She writes him long letters where she tries hard not to let her worry seep through. Tom has worrying business to take care of, and Sara thinks it wouldn't do to let him think she was unhappy. Instead she tells him stories. Some are about herself, most are about others. It's almost like Pretending. She builds of an anecdote someone told, of a stranger's comment caught in passing, of the faces of people in the streets. From that little detail, she imagines a story. Tom's letters back tells her she's a wonderful storyteller and always manages to get his spirits up. Sara has written dozens of quirky little tales of Parisian life by the time Germany declares war and makes Paris seem shell-shocked (even though dark speculation has been going on for quite a while).

As soon as Thomas Carrisford, British gentleman of Indian diamond mines, can make it happen, he is reunited with his darling little Sara in London.

"I couldn't stand the thought of being apart from you in these times," he tells her. "It feels more secure to have you with me here, at home, in the dear dull civilisation of London."

Sara tells him how very happy she is to see him again (which is true) but does not tell him how sad she was to leave the glamour and liveliness of Paris for foggy London (which is also true). The news keeps getting uglier. So does the city herself, and the people who muddle through her streets: more tired and frightened and grey by every single day.

In March 1915 the newspapers write about the Battle of Neuve Chapelle - and in small printed letters it says that the Indian Corps provided half the attacking force. Uncle Tom appears to feel more Indian than he has since the start of the unrest. He talks warmly about the Indian willingness to do the Queen's bidding, about their sense of honour and their great courage. Sara, too, feels oddly proud. Then Tom gets a letter, written in Hindu, from the woman who was their housekeeper during the last months in India. Her son has enlisted in the Corps, and been sent to the front. He's twenty years old and left filled to bursting with pride and honour and excitement. Now's he's written to her: "this is not war; it is the ending of the world". She wants to ask Mr Sahib, the dear Mr Carrisford Sahib, if he could help her get more news of her son. It has been too long since his last letter. She is sure that Mr Sahib, an important man in London knows better ways to ask than a poor Indian mother does.

A few days later, Sara sits on chair in a hotel restaurant, gazing at the window where the girl with the blazing hungry eyes disappeared a few moments before. She thinks about hunger and hopelessness, and about the fact that with all her diamonds, she can neither end this war, nor feed all the hungry attic girls and children in the streets, nor bring back missing Indian warrior boys to their mothers. She ponders desperation; how it's raw edge shows up in more and more people's eyes. And finally, she thinks about hope. How nothing is quite as bad if you have a hope for something else. How everything brightens if you see a little bit beyond your dreary everyday reality, if you just imagine for a slight moment - pretend - and turn the plain grey into different shades.

Sara leaves the ball early. When her carriage has left her by their front porch she goes in to find Tom, pausing just to slip out of her coat. He's sitting in the library, looking up in surprise when she enters. "Home already? Were all the young men unusually dull?"

"No - I just, I was thinking. There's something I want to do."

He smiles, tenderly, her Indian Gentleman, and says, "You can do anything you want, my princess. What is it?"

"People seem so unhappy. It's like there's no hope left. And I was thinking - do you remember the stories I wrote for you from Paris?"

"Of course. They were amazing."

"And you said they always got your mood up, because they were humorous, or quirky, or even when they were sad, or melancholy, because they reminded you that there were countless other humans in the world with feelings. That's what I'd like to do. I'd write more stories, and I'd want as many people as possible to read them, and think about them. Maybe they'd laugh or maybe they'd cry, but it would take their minds of the war and their own worries at least for a moment. It could be a little glimmer of hope. I think I could just go on and on and write thousands of little stories. I see them all over, in the smallest things. Everything's a story. You are a story - I am a story. And I'm going to get these stories out for people to read! It'll be my contribution, for the sake of hope."

Sara paused to calm her quickening breath and flaming cheeks, and looked to Uncle Tom. He smiled, broadly.


End file.
